I was a huge fan of Kimi Cunningham Grant’s last two books, so I was anxious to read her latest, The Nature of Disappearing. Once again, she has crafted a suspenseful story that takes place in the wilderness.
Emlyn has recovered from being literally abandoned by her boyfriend,Tyler. Now five years later, she is remaking a life for herself as a wilderness and fishing guide in Idaho. So when he shows up asking for her help to find a missing mutual friend, she doesn’t immediately agree. But even though she and Janessa aren’t as close as they once were, she had previously been Emlyn’s best friend. So, of course, she finally agrees.
The story goes back and forth between the present day and her history meeting first Janessa and then Tyler. Grant does an excellent job of intertwining past and present to really round out Emlyn’s current state of mind.
Grant’s stories are always character rich and suspenseful. I found Emlyn an interesting character. She had to learn to trust after her father left when she was a child, only to be burned and lose her capacity to trust. Then, it becomes a question as to whether she can open herself up again.
The book was evenly paced and never dragged. The ending was believable and it was nice not to have an OTT ending. She writes about nature in such a way that will have you reaching for your hiking boots. Her writing is also clear enough to allow the reader to easily envision every scene.
Make sure to read her Author’s Note at the end. It gave me a little more insight into Kimi as a person.
My thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance copy of this book.

I loved the atmospheric writing in this book and it brought scenic Idaho to life for me. The story was a slow burn but the tension built steadily throughout. Emlyn’s internal struggle added depth to the narrative.
Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the ARC!

Pub Date: June 18, 2024

This atmospheric story is a great pick for buddy reads! The suspenseful blend of past and present timelines, wilderness exploration, and a missing person's case will spark a lot of discussions. While I wasn't as invested in the main character, the first three-quarters of the book were gripping. If you're looking for a huge mind-blowing twist, this might not be it.

Read if you like:
✨Atmospheric reads
✨Wilderness and camping
✨Missing people
✨Dual timelines

4.5 and I need to go to Idaho. I thoroughly enjoyed this nature setting and the author writes so vividly that I could easily picture it in my mind. With dual timelines, we follow Emlyn and Tyler as they search for Janessa while we also learn about their past relationship and friendship that lead us to this point. I was invested in these characters, very curious about exactly what happened with Emlyn and Tyler, and really enjoyed the descriptions of the wilderness and camping.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital copy and a chance to read this early. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to @StMartinsPress and #NetGalley for the digital ARC of #TheNatureOfDisappearing. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

A very readable suspense/thriller set in present day Idaho. The story centers on Emlyn, who is quietly rebuilding her life after the near fatal end of her relationship with Tyler and the estrangement from her best friend, Janessa. When Janessa seems to go missing, Tyler turns to Emlyn for help. As they track her friend deeper into the wilderness, Emlyn begins to doubt what she's been told and realizes she might soon be in danger too. The story bounces back and forth between present day and about 5-10 years prior), providing the backstory to Emlyn's and Janessa's back story as well as what happened with Emlyn and Tyler.

This is my second book by the author and I think I'll keep coming back for more. Grant writes real, relatable characters that you want to root for. And her writing clearly conveys the healing power of nature and the outdoors.

**3.5 STARS** Already I've seen a lot of mixed reviews on this books, but for the most part , I really enjoyed it.... until the ending. I loved the wilderness vibe and the really descriptive and atmospheric writing that the author used. It really helped me to get immersed in the story and the setting it was taking place in. I loved the tension between the characters and the overall sense of mystery that was curated throughout! I do feel like the ending really fell flat, and felt pretty rushed. I think that the thought was there, and decently executed for the most part, but the plot twists kind of ruined the story for me and totally killed the "we're solving a mystery" vibe of the entire book.

I enjoyed the alternating timelines in each chapter, and getting to know the back stories of the characters. I probably would still recommend this book, as it is really not a bad read, it just didn't end in the best way.

I loved this author’s previous book – These Silent Woods, so I was very excited about her newest book. Unfortunately, this one wasn’t as impressive. It starts very good but then most of the story is very slow; it was hard for me to connect with the characters and I struggled with reading it. The pace does not pick back up until about 80% in.
This author does an amazing job transporting her readers to the wilderness and connecting them to the nature and that was really the only reason I finished this book.
Overall, this is an enjoyable book but just not as good as These Silent Woods

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin's Press - Minotaur Books and the author for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I love this authors style of writing! These Silent Woods was my favorite book of 2023, so this one was highly anticipated for me!

The descriptions of nature make you feel like you’re there, seeing everything yourself. I also loved Emlyn’s little vocab quirk. I thought it brought a cool element to the book.

I will say that it took me a lot longer to get into this book. It seemed like the first 70% was very slow and I don’t always love alternating timelines in a book, but I understand why it was necessary in this one. I also felt like this book was a lot less realistic than the last one I read of hers. And lastly… how did the gun not come back up?! I thought for sure that would’ve had something to do with the ending, but it ended up wrapping up really quickly with no mention of it.

Regardless, I’ll read any book this author puts out. She is so insanely talented!

Thank you to Kimi Cunningham Grant, St Martins Press, and Netgalley for the ARC of this book.

Emlyn is a wilderness and flyfishing guide in Idaho. She has buried most of her painful past, but she’s slowly starting to reconnect with her former best friend Janessa. When Emlyn sees a news report that Janessa has gone missing in the wilderness, she’s desperately worried. Emlyn is even more concerned when Tyler, her ex-boyfriend, reappears to join the search for Janessa. Emlyn will have to confront her memories of the past to find her friend and heal enough to move forward in this suspenseful survival thriller. I thought Grant's first thriller was stronger, but this is an entertaining page-turner.

Kimi Cunningham Grant’s newest novel started off somewhat slow, but it quickly picked up speed and never lost its momentum. Emlyn, the main character, has a bit of a traumatic background that significantly impacts her self-esteem. As a result, she has a difficult time opening up and trusting people. When her estranged best friend goes missing, Emlyn is willing to put everything on the line to save her. However, the bad guys aren’t necessarily what they seem and Emlyn must trust her gut (and her friend) in order to survive. I loved the character development and the friendship between Emlyn and Janessa, and while I was able to guess at the twists before they happened, I loved how neatly things wrapped up at the end.

Thank you Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Very well written and a great premise. You (or at least I) have no clue what is going on. I think I gave myself a brain sprain trying to figure it out. When it was revealed, I had a slap my forehead kind of moment and thought, you should have known!!! I'm not the greatest fan of outdoor adventure, so I think a bit of the backstory was probably lost on me. I did do quite a bit of camping when I was younger, but there was no survival skills involved at all. As a matter of fact, I'm still scarred to this day from a misadventure of letting my aunt's dog escape from our tent while they went to town for some supplies. Good grief, I get anxiety even now just thinking about it. The dog was found and was okay...me, not so much. So yeah, show me your beautiful pictures and bring nature to me, because I'm not going out of my way to go out to it!!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur for the opportunity to review an advanced edition of The Nature of Disappearing.

This book has a bit of an identity crisis. Is it a romance? A Thriller? A Mystery? A Chick Lit friendship book? A Coming of Age? I believe the answer is, a bit of all of these. The problem is, it doesn't do any of these well. It begins as more of a romance, and finishes as a coming of age novel, but even for that, the characters behave much younger than they are told to be in the book. If I let the age go (I believe at one point it was said they were 28) and I let the characters in my mind be in their early 20s, maybe a bit more believable. Some of the characters barely scratched the surface of who they were- were only there to move the story along, though they were framed as a principle in the book. I felt there were plot points, historical facts, and enlightenments coming out of left field. I finished the book, parts of the story I enjoyed and I loved the wildness and the wilderness of the setting. I am sure there are some audiences that will love this book. I was just one that wanted the scope a little more narrow, details a little more flushed out, and the characters dug into a little more to get to the meat of the story- not trying to hit a little bit of everything. After trying hard to be a thriller (I think?) the book comes off as fluff. Decent beach read if you are expecting romance and friendship discovery more than thriller mystery. 2.5-3 stars.

I’m a big fan of the author’s most recent work, These Silent Woods, so I immediately requested The Nature of Disappearing on NetGalley and I’m grateful I was able to read this ahead of publication. This is a slow burn mystery that ultimately builds to a series of reveals. The pacing was definitely slower than I would prefer and unfortunately the mystery just wasn’t that compelling.

The chapters alternate between past and present in a way that kept me interested. The author’s signature atmospheric setting is definitely a highlight in this book. The book details the difficulties of loving someone who struggles with addiction and also carries a thread of gospel truth that is encouraging. Overall, though this book wasn’t my favorite I look forward to the author’s next work.

Many thanks to Minotaur Books for the e-ARC via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

My fellow booksellers and I are constantly recommending These Silent Woods to our customers, and I was so excited to get my hands on Grant's newest book. It did not disappoint! Along with the beautiful prose about wilderness and wildness I was expecting, this story also had a fresh cast of characters and the twists really did keep coming right up until the end. I'd still recommend These Silent Woods as a first read for those unfamiliar with Grant, but The Nature of Disappearing has wide appeal and is the perfect bite-sized mystery.

I want to start by giving a big thank you to @netgalley and @kimicgrant for generously gifting me this digital ARC! This book has been (still is) in my Amazon cart for months! I will admit, I favor ‘These Silent Woods’ just a tad more, but this one was such a great read!!

🤍Mystery/ Thriller
🤍Missing Person(s)
🤍Broken love story
🤍Survival
🤍Childhood Trauma

The love story aspect of this book came as a surprise to me. But I liked it a lot! The author has a way of making you feel for every character she writes! I found myself feeling empathy for characters I probably shouldn’t have. Everyone has a story. Everyone has a past. Everyone has their own baggage. I would recommend giving this book a try! I absolutely recommend checking out “These Silent Woods” also!

Thank you so much to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for this advanced readers copy of The Nature of Disappearing by Kimi Cunningham Grant.

I absolutely adored the author’s last novel, These Silent Woods, so I couldn’t get my hands on her most recent work fast enough. In this story, we meet Emlyn, a young fishing guide and loner who alludes to a traumatic past. When Emlyn’s former friend and van life social media star goes missing, another friend from their past shows up begging for Emlyn’s help.

While I enjoyed the setup and setting for this novel, I was pretty antsy with the pacing. Told in dual timeline, it takes a sweet forever to fully understand what happened with Emlyn and these people from her past. It wasn’t until nearly 60 percent of the story that things started to get interesting. Ultimately, the resolution was pretty forgettable and anticlimactic.

I will be the first to admit, I almost gave up on this book! Then about half way through I was absolutely hooked! I was so invested in Emlyn and Janessa’s friendship, I had to know the end! Not to mention the end for poor Emlyn herself! The description in this book are very detailed, so detailed I felt like I was right there with the characters! I will say however I was disappointed with the ending, I needed more! I’m hoping there will be a second book where we can all see what comes next for emlyn and Janessa!!

Very good suspense and some "never saw them coming" twists.
Emiyn has started a new life in the wilderness as a guide for an out lands
tour company and has chosen to move on from the life she used to know.
She is forging a new future when the past reaches out to grab her. She
receives a call from a former very dear friend who had become just a
"sort of" casual acquaintance over the past couple of years. When she tries
to respond to her friend and never gets through with no further contact from
her she begins to think that something might have happened to Janessa.
Connecting with another former friend who is also concerned about her
sudden disappearance off the social media grid, they team up to follow her camping tracks.
The story is captivating but a bit eye rolling at times - some of the re-connection scenes between
Emilyn and her former boyfriend are a bit hard to believe,
All in all, the story is well developed and moves along and the characters are all very well defined
and easy to understand.

Grant has crafted another addictive, suspenseful mystery that will keep readers on the edge of their seats! After being left to die in the forest by her ex Tyler, Emlyn has slowly built a new life for herself on the edge of the Bridger-Teton National Forest with a kind pastoral Rev and gentle Forest Service agent Varden to call her friends. When Tyler returns out of the blue begging for her help as a guide to search for her old and now missing best friend Janessa, Emlyn must consider how far into the wilderness she’s willing to go to restore a broken friendship and save Janessa’s life. Grant is masterful at building snowballing tension and unease and an unrelenting sense that something is Not Right. As with These Silent Woods, Grant paints beautifully detailed pictures of the backcountry Tyler and Emlyn hike through to search for their missing friend. This book switches back and forth between the history of Tyler, Emlyn, and Janessa and how it relates to current events. (It did feel a little bit choppy to interrupt the flow so much and one of the only things I didn’t like about this book.) The story is at atmospherically suspensful; Grant’s writing shows sometimes you don’t need car chases and fights to build tension; all you need is a pair of yellow eyes flickering in the darkness. I could not put this book down; Grant perfectly captures the dual sense of fear and awe that deep wilderness inspires. I only wish the book had at least one more chapter!

-Readers should be aware part of the plot revolves around around a side character’s heavy drug addiction.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book and was not required to give a review. All opinions expressed above are t own.

3.5 stars. I have really enjoyed previous books by this author and this new one did not disappoint. Once again, the setting is in a part of the country that I a not familiar with so I learned that maybe I need to broaden where I travel as the wilderness is far more exciting than I knew.

Main character Emlynn tries to keep to herself as much as possible when not leading people on guided hikes through the woods or on fishing trips. She has a past boyfriend who abandoned her to die and she s avoiding him at all costs. Her former friend is now missing and the old boyfriend appeals to Emlynn to help track her in case she is in trouble. Of course this ignites feelings for him again as he tries to prove that he is no longer that person that he was before. Her walls are up to protect her, yet feelings do seep in.

Her forest ranger friend and Rev, an unofficial pastor, have kept her company for the past couple of years and have tried to help shield her from the boyfriend. They really have been her life companions and she is afraid she has made them angry by her decision to try to find her friend.

Thank you NetGalley for an advance book. Honest opinions expressed here are my own and are freely given.